A Tasty Hot Pot — Restaurant in Aurora

Message to the owner at the bottom with solutions

I visited this establishment with my roommates, we wanted to try out a Hot Pot place, and this seemed to fit the bill. We have a Muslim roommate, with dietary restrictions, so he picked the place because on their site menu (which I am not realising is 5 years old and not updated) it showed the lamb was halal (this will come into play later). We arrived and were seated immediately, my fiance who was with me needs a cane or wheelchair, so they accomidated her and sat us near the sides bar. We got waters pretty quickly, so far so good. Then we go to order. We tell the waiter that my roommate has a pork intolerance (which btw, is considered an allergen) and he said he would ask what could be done, but the chef doesnt speak english (not really a vote of confidence). After waiting 30+ minutes for him to ask the chef and text his boss (I presume the owner of this restaurant), he finally came back to say they will clean the meat slicer ONCE so we need to order what ever we want right now for him. While this sounds kind and like accomidation, it's really not. What he just told me was they only have one meat slicer (?) which means you are creating cross contamination between your meats, which is a huge no no if you have ever taken a Servsafe Certification. I also should point out, if you cut pork on a slicer, then cut your halal lamb, it is no longer halal. We were there well over 3 hours, of which 2 and a half was spent waiting for food, and half an hour was spent eating food and talking. There were never any plates at the buffet, I saw customers constantly waiting there for plates to be brought out. There were many foods at the buffet that were empty and not being refilled, or were unpopular so they were stale/going bad. Another issue seems to be the seating. I have bad back issues, and these tables are so packed in, if someone is in the table behind you, they are constantly pressed against you, and you feel every movement or bump. I had the fortune of sitting infront of a lady that felt the need to be bouncing around in her chair and constantly getting up. so after an hour of being there I was in terrible pain from getting slammed into non-stop. Another issue was nothing was actually labelled in the buffet. This poses a problem. Our group has various intolerances and allergens, and we had no idea what we were picking up, we had to ask the waiters. That brings me to my last point for now, the wait staff was non existant? We counted 18 tables, 6 rows of 3. Each table has 4 place settings, so thats a maximum of 72 customers (not counting the party rooms). I only recall seeing maybe 3 wait staff, and let me tell you, those tables were filled. We couldnt get water when we needed it, we couldnt get a menu to order more, we couldnt even ask questions about the food. In fact, I know we werent the only ones upset, their little robot kept going back to the kitchen with trays of raw meat because people were leaving from not getting service, or long wait times. I don't even blame the wait staff for this, this is due to a bad ratio of customer to staff. On a busy night I can easily understand them becoming overwhelmed.

Lets talk solutions. As for the allergen stuff, and pork stuff - Just have more than one meat cutter, and use one for pork and one for other meats. It would seem reasonable to have multiple if your primary dish is thin sliced meat, this would also cut down wait times.

For wait staff and seating - Take out a table, have 2 per row,. The customers will not be so packed in, and you will have a better staff to customer ratio, and a better customer to buffet ratio.

Lack of plates - reducing tables will give a better ratio here, but assuming 6 rows, 3 tables, 4 customers, 2 plates. That's around 144 plates for the buffet. and throw in another 50 as a buffer.

Unlabelled food - This one seems pretty easy, put up labels, and maybe list your allergens on this label...

My daughter saw this experience and wanted to try it. So we took an hour drive. When we arrived the host did ask us if we wanted al la Carte or all you can eat. I let him know we had never been to a place like this before. So he quickly gave us a ton of information. He was pleasant and kind at that time, I will say that. We got sat and looked over both menus. And decided to do the AYCE. We were not aware though that you get portions for each member of your party (which doesnt seem like a bad thing, that will come into play later), or that you could order again. So my party of 4 ordered the proteins we each liked, and veggies we each individually liked. Thinking you just make your own little meal. For instance, a member of my party only likes chicken, another only likes beef. Neither are going to eat one or the other of the choices picked by the other person. We didn't fully understand you get those servings for each person on your party. We did understand if one person wants to do AYCE then that's what you get. So we picked things we would like to try, by our own taste. Here is where my MAJOR issue was. We were a bit rushing because of tornado sirens sounding for 20 minutes and bad weather this evening. We would be driving into to it get back home. I asked for the bill and got attitude. I was scolded like a child for wasting cabbage and Bok Choy, loudly with other customers around, and the plate put up in front of my face, saying how now it would be thrown in the trash. I was told the establishment usually charges for that. At that point it made me feel humliated and upset, I told the host to go ahead and charge me for our waste. I was fine with it. He said no, it's our first time but next time he will. I told him again, charge me for the waste. He said he wouldn't because we obviously didn't understand the portion sizes and it wouldn't be fair. My bill was dang near $150 and still I'm ok with paying for our waste. We didn't order out of being wasteful or greedy. Just out of a new experience, out of our own individual tastes and I guess not fully understanding how it worked. We did have a great time trying something new, but that part.....really turned me off amd ruinedthe experience. My daughters friend who came with us looked at me after the host did that and asked I'll ever go back, I promptly told her no. I do know now though, should we ever try an establishment like this again, I will ask many more questions. Looking at the reviews, I noticed another restaurant in the area that seems to let you choose how many servings you...

We ordered hot pot with mushroom broth and the spicy beef broth. I told to the waiter that we need only mild spicy beef broth. As soon as we were served and I tried to taste the beef broth I started immediately coughing. I felt like somebody pepper sprayed in my mouth. That's how extremely spicy the broth was. Just to let you know I love spicy food. I regularly eat chilly hot sauce and hot red pepper paste and other hot stuff. I can tolerate really spicy food. But in this case it was beyond any expectations. I felt like the cook decided to put all stored hot red pepper they had into my pot. More than that I feel like he even decided to use an elevator to go down deep to underground to the Hell to borrow spicy hellish stuff from there and also add into our pot.

After I tried the first spoon of this hellish broth I couldn't eat anything. This is because I had fire in my mouth. I felt like the Gendalf White set up the flame of Udun in my tongue which slowly burned down to my stomach. Took two glasses of ice water which helped a little bit with my burning food pipe. I felt burning sensation in my stomach for the whole night after the visit. When I asked the waiter why they did the broth very spicy he tried to assure me that this is they consider as a mild spicy level. This is very immature and unprofessional to try to lie to customer. Or if it's really their Mild level of spiciness they must be crazy. Somebody wrote here that mushroom broth is good for kids. Well. Our mushroom broth was also spicy. Not hell spicy like the beef broth but still mildly burning the tongue. So I wouldn't give this mushroom broth to my little kids too. One visit to this crazy restaurant was more than...